Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

The next morning, after breakfast, we went to my flat to collect a few clothes. I wasn’t going to pack everything just yet, although I had no intention of ever living in the flat again, just some basic essentials. It was still raining steadily. Louise couldn’t find anywhere to park near the flat so she stopped on a double yellow line a few yards down from the front door and I said I’d run up.

“I won’t be more than a couple of minutes,” I said.

“Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

I shook my head and smiled.

“I’m just going to say good-bye.”

There was an air of general squalor and neglect about the place, though I’d only been gone one day, as if the flat knew that nobody cared about it. I went into my bedroom and gathered a few dresses from the wardrobe. Two pairs of trousers, four T-shirts, several knickers, bras, and pairs of socks. Some trainers. That would do for now. I shoved them all in a large hold-all. Then I went into the bathroom, took off the dirty clothes I was wearing, and threw them into a corner. I would collect all my laundry later. Another time.

I heard a click, like a cupboard door closing. It’s nothing, I said to myself. Imagination plays nasty tricks. Back in the bedroom I found some clean underwear. I closed the curtains and stood in front of the mirror to put them on. I saw my face reflected there, smudges under my eyes. My naked body, tanned arms and legs, white belly. I pulled my knickers on and took my new T-shirt-the one Louise said made me look like a flower-out of the bag I had brought with me and pulled it over my head. It was stupid, but I couldn’t quite face wearing anything that smelled of the flat, of my old life. I wanted to be clean and new.

As I pulled the shirt over my breasts, without any warning at all, I felt a grasp around my neck, around my body, and a weight on my back, someone on me. I lost my balance and fell hard with the weight on me, pushing my covered face hard into the carpet. I was stunned, in pain. I felt the hand through the shirt holding my mouth, a warm hand smelling of soap, apple soap from my bathroom. An arm wrapped round my rib cage, just under my breasts.

“Bitch, you bitch.”

I started to writhe, twisting my limbs this way and that, trying to scream, to howl. I couldn’t reach anything-my arms were held-couldn’t do anything. He made no sound, just breathed his hot soft breath into my ear. At last I stopped struggling. Outside someone shouted, the wail of a siren came closer, then faded away. Going somewhere else.

The grip on my neck slackened, I tried to move and to scream, but then it was on my throat. There was nothing I could do. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t scream. I thought about Louise sitting in the car outside, waiting for me, though she didn’t seem near to me now; she seemed a long long way off. Soon maybe she would come to find me. Not soon enough. How stupid, to die like this, before I’d even begun. Before I had had a life. How stupid.

Very slowly, the floor came up to meet me. I felt my head bounce on floorboards, my feet slide across the wood. I heard the rain on the window, pattering gently. I couldn’t speak, no words left to be said now, no time to say them anymore, but somewhere deep inside a voice that was saying: No, please no. Please.

Everything seemed to be happening, but then our house at breakfast time always seems to be rather like one of those medieval castles with donkeys and pigs and all the serfs coming in for shelter at the first sniff of trouble. In the weeks since our move, it had got even more chaotic, if that’s possible, and the medieval castle had a building site slap bang in the middle of it.

Clive had left the house at six, which is even earlier than usual because at the moment he’s working on some sort of horrific takeover bid. Just before eight Lena drags the two older boys into the Espace for the school run. Lena’s our nanny-slash-au-pair thing; lovely-looking girl, Swedish, infuriatingly blond and slim and young, though she has this thing through her nose that makes me wince every time I see it. Goodness knows what it must feel like when she blows her nose.

Then people started arriving. Mary, of course, our priceless cleaner, who came with us to Primrose Hill. She’s a treasure, except that I have to spend so much time standing over her and telling her what to do and then checking she’s done it that I’ve said to Clive I might as well do the cleaning myself. And then there’s all the rest of the people who were meant to be improving the house but instead have been reducing it to a slum full of brick dust. The rewiring and replumbing had been finished at the end of the week before, and the best that could be said about the house at that point was that anything from then on had to be an improvement.

I was satisfied, though, despite everything. This was what I had always wanted, what Clive had always promised me. A project. The house was down to bare boards and walls, back to the beams and rafters, practically. Now I was going to turn it into a home we could be proud of. I know you’re supposed to fall in love with a house but this house wouldn’t be worth falling in love with for another six months at least. There had been two old dears living there before in what looked like a secondhand bookshop that nobody had gone into since the fifties. The question wasn’t what to change, but what on earth one could possibly keep.

I spent four months with Jeremy, our clever architect, head down over plans, tanking him up with espressos. It was just a matter of being simple. Rip out everything. Put new roof on. Then kitchen and dining room in the basement, living rooms on the ground floor, Clive’s study on the first floor at the back, then bedrooms all the way up. Attic conversion for nanny to get up to whatever nannies get up to without scaring horses. Lavatories left, right, and center. A suite for Clive and me. Power shower for the boys in hopes it might persuade them to wash occasionally.

So this morning Jeremy popped in at around half past eight with Mick to go over a problem with an arch or beam or something. Closely followed by Francis, who we’ve brought with us to do-by which I mean completely redo -what passed for the garden. Hundred and twenty foot, which isn’t bad for London, but it looked like a giant rabbit run until Francis got at it. The ruck of electricians and plumbers have gone, thank God, but Mick comes with his entourage. Tea and coffee all round, of course, as soon as Lena gets back to make it. Somewhere in the middle of it I pop Christo-who’s four-along to his play-school thing, which he’d joined when we moved in. I’d become a bit dubious about it: no proper uniform, just blue sweatshirts, and wall-to-wall sandboxes and finger painting. But it was hardly worth chopping and changing. He’d be at Lascelles Pre-Prep in September anyway and, what is more, off my hands, which would be something of a relief.

Then it was back to the house and finally a sit-down, a coffee, and the quickest of glances at the paper and the mail before getting down to work-i.e., walking around stopping people knocking through the wrong wall and doing some liaising. Leo, my faithful handyman, was going to be dropping in and I’d been sweating over a list of things that needed doing. And I needed a serious discussion with Jeremy about the kitchen. That had been the really hard part of our planning. The thing is, in any other part of the house, if you get something wrong, you can live with it. But if the fridge door opens and blocks the cutlery drawer, you’re going to be irritated by it twenty-five times a day until you’re old and gray. What you ought to do ideally is build the kitchen, live in it for six months, then do it again properly. But even Clive isn’t rich enough for that . Or at least not patient enough.